Episode 1.9

As I crouched so the humans could climb on my back, a soft paw nudged my arm. “What’s going on?”

I sighed at the voidcat. “It’s a long story, but we’re leaving here before the glacier dragon comes back, so hop on.”

She flitted up to settle at the base of my neck. Human hands grasped my feathers, and a shoe pressed against my side briefly before Aster sat behind her.

“Are you sure you can carry three people and a cat?”

“I’m not sure of anything except that I don’t want to get eaten, and I doubt you do either.” I felt Izzy’s petite weight crawl up behind Aster, but there was no sense of Vance following suit. Fine, if he wanted to stay, that was up to him. I started to stand. The weight of two people and a cat was like a full backpack, nothing I hadn’t hiked with before.

“Wait,” Vance said in a squeak of a voice.

Annoyed, I laid down just long enough for him to scramble up at the back. Without checking if he’d grabbed hold of anything, I leapt to my feet. The extra hundred-plus pounds didn’t make much of a difference, but it did make me acutely aware of my sore, clawless middle toes.

I wished I could’ve flown, but I’d never done it outside of Shade’s dreamscape. Now probably wasn’t the best time to risk it and possibly crash with passengers. Instead, I started walking and built up to a trot as I got used to the odd way passengers threw off my center of gravity. After a few minutes, I shifted into a smoother run that covered at least fifteen feet a stride.

This wasn’t too bad. Now I just had to figure out where I was going. The glacier dragon’s scent was everywhere around here. We must’ve been near the center of his territory. Turning right a little, I smelled his scent was vaguely weaker in that direction. With a little luck, we might not be far from his territory’s border.

I ran across the snowy landscape for what felt like an hour with relative ease. Sure, my feet were sore, but the cold ground helped with that. And sure, every time I took a step, my passengers bumped up and down and added a new bruise to my spine, but it wasn’t that bad. At first.

The snow gradually became deeper and fluffier, no doubt due to it being farther away from the dragon’s typical travel routes. I wasn’t sure what I expected running through four-foot-deep snow would be like, but it wasn’t this. I had to slow to an awkward trot to force my way through the clinging slush. At one point, I tried heating up more in order to evaporate the snow before I even touched it, but my passengers fervently protested and I stopped. I guessed I wouldn’t have liked having my butt burned either.

As I trotted on, the twin moons sunk toward the horizon much too quickly. The dragon’s scent was less present, but we were still well within the confines of his territory. With the slushy tracks I’d left behind, he would have no trouble finding us come morning. I couldn’t possibly outrun him, so I had to get out of his territory before it came to a footrace.

My natural glow dimmed as the first pinkish rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon. The dragon’s scent was growing stronger again. He’d likely sprayed his scent along the border of his territory, which meant we were almost out of danger. At least, I hoped so. If I was wrong, I might’ve managed to go full circle and end up in the center again. Gah, I really hoped I hadn’t done that. My legs were screaming for a rest, and every breath I took was a gasp that scraped my throat. If we weren’t close to the border, I wouldn’t be able to hold on for long. A while back, I’d taken a short restroom break, and I almost hadn’t been able to get moving again.

It was worse now. All I could think about were my aching legs and my throbbing feet and the bouncing weights on my back. Maybe the dragon wouldn’t care if we were just a little bit inside his territory. Maybe he would assume we were too stupid to stick around and he wouldn’t bother to come after us at all.

“Uh, M-Mars?” Aster asked, his voice fluctuating with my steps. “Is that what I think it is?”

I glanced back to see him pointing at a dark mound on the horizon. It was obviously moving, kicking up clouds of snow in a virtual blizzard around it. My draconic eyes focused to pick up what Aster couldn’t—a segmented body led by a pair of massive, clicking pincers. The dragon hadn’t waited for sunrise to come after us. He’d been tracking us this whole time. Waiting for an excuse to get us. His ‘trade’ of my claws for our freedom was a farce, no doubt made so he could enjoy the thrill of hunting us down.

For all I knew, his territory could’ve stretched on for miles more, and even if it hadn’t, there was no reason to believe he would stop at the border. No laws would care if one dragon killed another dragon, even if said murdered dragon was carrying a few humans. The Mystican equivalent of police would see us as the idiots who stumbled into his territory. If only to avoid being eaten themselves, they would say he was perfectly within his rights to eat trespassers.

We needed to find somewhere that we could fit but the dragon couldn’t. No, that wouldn’t do. Despite its name, the glacier dragon was a stone-type dragon. He carved tunnels from solid rock to make his home. There was no crevice we could hide in that he couldn’t get to sooner or later. I needed to fly out of reach. Yeah, that would do it. Maybe I could even fly so high out of sight that he would give up trying to follow me.

I sped up as much as I could with stones for legs and snow holding me back. Spreading my wings halfway, I tried to remember Shade’s lessons on flight. They weren’t very helpful. As a dreamwalker, he’d never done it himself. He’d claimed my birth father was an excellent flier, though, so it should be in my blood. That wasn’t exactly comforting, but it was better than nothing. Gritting my beak against the pain in my legs, I jumped as high as I could and swept my wings downward. They plowed into the snow, making me face-plant.

My passengers shouted and scrambled to hold on as I stood again. I silently cursed my exhausted brain. Of course I couldn’t take off from here; even in dreams, I’d only ever been able to fly off raised platforms. I needed a cliff.

Taking off again, I scoured the landscape for anything I could climb. There were boulders poking up from the snow that might help, but most of them were so out of the way that if I went after them, it would only make it easier for the dragon gain on us. And if they weren’t tall enough, that be the death of us.

No, I needed something more certain. The gently sloping hill I was trotting down wasn’t instilling any confidence in me. This whole place was a mess of low hills and pathetically small boulders. Mountains rose in the far distance, but there was no way I could reach them in time.

The ground beneath my feet began to slope upward again. Even that little bit of incline made my legs scream for a rest. I stumbled and narrowly caught myself with my arms. They threatened to give out as well, so I quickly righted myself again. Finding a cliff didn’t seem likely. I would keep an eye out for one, but our best chance of surviving would be that the dragon kept his word. Technically speaking, he hadn’t broken his word yet; if he didn’t pursue us past the border of his territory, we might just make it out of this alive.

The dragon’s stench was stronger than ever, a sure sign that he’d marked his territory line somewhere around here. Claw marks on boulders to either side confirmed my suspicions. We had a chance. I could do this.

I didn’t dare look back as we crested the hill, which was a good thing, as I seem to have stumbled across the only sharp drop-off in the area. It was just a plate of rock sticking out ten feet above an icy river, but it might be enough. Or I might be about to drown us all. Either way, I had to cross the river, so I might as well risk taking flight.

Spreading my wings again, I ran to the edge of the rocky overhang. A roar echoed behind me, and the rock jerked unnaturally beneath my feet. It pitched upward as if to throw me back toward the dragon. I leapt from the edge at the last second, praying my wings were strong enough to hold us all even without my inner fire to lighten the load.

For a split second, I thought I could do it. My wings ballooned upward like parachutes, catching my fall for an instant. Then the full force of gravity hit, and the wind nearly ripped my wings from their sockets. The icy river flew up to meet me. My wings fluttered behind like sock kites. The few sparks of magic I had left were barely enough to keep me warm, much less make me lighter.

I crashed through the ice. Cold water hit my skin like a thousand daggers, each one intent on carving a piece of me away. My feathers soaked through in an instant. They clung to my skin, weighing me down nearly as much as the human rocks shouting on my back.

The currents slammed me against one ice floe after another as I struggled to keep my friends above water.

My feet hit something hard, and I dug my claws into it. They held fast just long enough for me to feel a spark of hope. Then my exhausted feet spasmed, and the currents dragged me off again. Kicking wildly, I aimed for a bit of the far bank that poked out more than the rest. If I could get my feet beneath me, I could crawl out of here.

But my legs were little more than soggy noodles at the moment. My kicks did nothing to bring me closer to the shore. I was too tired and too broad to resist the current. Maybe the others could do it on their own, but I couldn’t.

The current dunked me under the water. When I came up, my head slammed against a hefty ice floe. Dazed, I jerked back and flailed in the water. Where was the surface, the unblocked surface? Ice was everywhere. My limbs went numb and senseless as I kicked and punched in search of an open space.

Something rammed my chest and pushed me up through the ice. As the ice cracked against my head and back, I scrabbled at what had to be the dragon’s pincer. But it wasn’t. It was just a spire of stone, no doubt enchanted to do the dragon’s bidding. Coughing up frigid water, I tried to stand. My legs wouldn’t respond. I couldn’t even wiggle my toes. Me and and my friends were as good as dead. Assuming they weren’t already, since I couldn’t feel my skin to know whether they were still clinging on.

The dragon roared behind me. I couldn’t even lift my head to look. Breathing alone was a struggle.

A smaller voice shouted back from somewhere in front of me. I squinted in a futile attempt to make my frozen eyes focus. The stone beneath me shuddered and lurched toward the bank I’d been aiming for. Had I gotten the directions mixed up? Or was the dragon just having trouble with his magic? Either way, this was an opportunity. If I could just stand up, I could find the others and run away. I could save us all.

The stone unceremoniously deposited me on the snowy bank amidst the dragon’s roars. He sounded farther away now. To be fair, everything sounded farther away now. Even the wind was dying down. Dull shouts, sounding almost human, were the last thing I heard before everything went dark.